E-Paper
After Italian tourist, wife also tests positive for coronavirus in Jaipur
The first sample from the 69-year-old man was collected on Saturday and had tested negative for coronavirus. After his condition deteriorated, a second sample was taken and it tested positive on Monday.
The wife of the Italian tourist, who has been found infected with coronavirus , also tested positive for the virus on Tuesday, Rajasthan’s state’s chief secretary DB Gupta said.
Her sample is being sent to the National Institute of Virology in Pune for another test, Gupta said.
The Italian tourist, including his wife, had come to Jaipur from Udaipur on February 28 along with a group of 20 people and checked into a hotel where he complained of breathlessness and cough.
ALSO WATCH | Coronavirus | India update: 6th case in Jaipur; Noida schools being sanitised
The first sample from the 69-year-old man was collected on Saturday and had tested negative for coronavirus. After his condition deteriorated, a second sample was taken and it tested positive on Monday.
His samples were then sent to the National Institute of Virology (NIV) in Pune for further testing and the laboratory on Tuesday confirmed he was infected with coronavirus.
The confirmation puts the number of people who have tested positive in the country to six.
“The patient is in isolation and is stable,” the Union health ministry said.
After the Italian tourist tested positive for novel coronavirus at a government hospital in Jaipur on Monday, the state health department on Tuesday sent the samples of 52 people, who came in contact with the tourist, to NIV Pune.
The 52 include 37 people from SMS Hospital, 11 from Fortis Hospital and four from the hotel where the tourist stayed, the official said. All of them have been kept in quarantine, the official added.
India reported two new cases of the deadly coronavirus on Monday—one from Delhi and another one from Hyderabad.
The government has stepped up efforts to stop the spread of coronavirus as it advised citizens to refrain from non-essential travel to the worst affected countries, including China, South Korea, Iran, Italy and Singapore.
It also widened the screening of flyers from several countries at airports among other measures.
